Transcendentalists also stress the value of independent thoughts as well as the pursuit of lofty spiritual life and highlight the role of subjective factors such as human needs and emotion in moral life. They advocate humanism and emancipation of inpiduality and thus raised the freedom of humanity to an unprecedented level. Transcendentalism did not form a complete theory system. It was mostly an emancipation movement which covered religion, society, literature and philosophy to search for a new set of beliefs and ideals. As one of the significant movements in the history of American thought, Transcendentalism laid special stress on the value of self-reliance, and called on Americans to go beyond the pursuit of material and seek lofty spirit.
2.3 The Main Exponents and Their Representative Works of Transcendentalism
The main exponents in the movement were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Margaret Fuller and Amos Bronson Alcott. Other prominent transcendentalists included Louisa May Alcott, Charles Timothy Brooks, Orestes Brownson, William Ellery Channing, William Henry Channing, James Freeman Clarke, Christopher, Pearse Cranch, Walt Whitman, John Sullivan Dwight, Convers Francis, William Henry Furness, Frederic Henry Hedge, Sylvester Judd, Theodore Parker, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, George Ripley, Thomas Treadwell Stone, Emily Dickinson, and Jones Very. Among these persons, we mainly introduce the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson.
The famous works of these exponents are Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature; Henry David Thoreau’s On the Duty of Civil Disobedience; Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Emily Dickinson’s Because I Could Not Stop for Death, Success Is Counted Sweetest. 梭罗的超验主义与老子道家思想的关联性(4):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_9996.html